2023-11-02 15:56:13
Open hatred of Jews has long been rampant in France before the eyes of the world. Abroad this could have been a warning. Instead, states like Germany promote trivializers and people who defend anti-Semites.
Deadly hatred of Jews: Flowers in front of the former home of the murdered Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in Paris, March 2018.
Sadak Souici / Le Pictorium / Image
The faces and clothes of the two twin girls are smeared with cheese because, they say, Jews stink. A group of students surrounds them, beats them and insults them: “Jewish bitches” – “You’re a whore, and Jewish at that.” The girls are tortured for around forty minutes. One should kneel down and apologize for being Jewish.
The incident occurred in March 2002 at the Collège-Lycée Henri Bergson in Paris. He is one of dozens described in the book “Les territoires perdus de la république” (“The Lost Territories of the Republic”) – by school principals, teachers and scientists. It’s about sexism, homophobia, feelings of religious superiority and, above all, anti-Semitism. Teachers report that they are insulted as sluts and “dirty Jews” by students. Some people are told that they will not tolerate Jewish women correcting exams. Others are bombarded with pencils and erasers in the classroom. The students call it “Intifada.”
The footballers of the Jewish club Maccabi are told before a game in Paris that they will all be shot. A rabbi explains that he no longer reacts to the threats and insults he is exposed to on the street. Numerous case studies deal with the fate of Jewish boys and girls who are bullied and beaten by comrades. Groups of young men lie in wait for them on the street, spit on them and threaten them with knives. Schoolhouses are daubed with tags like “NLJ”. Their message: “Nique les juifs”, fuck the Jews. One teacher says his students use words like “Shoah” and “Jew” with derisive laughter and comments like “They deserve it!” acknowledge.
The typical perpetrator: young, from the banlieue and Maghreb
The first edition of “Territoires perdus” was published in October 2002, a few months after the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the runoff election for the presidency. It’s worth reading this twenty-year-old book right now. Because it anticipates what is often only noted with astonishment in view of expressions of sympathy for Hamas acts of terror, anti-Semitic graffiti and attacks on Jews: Jewish life is in danger in Europe not only because of right-wing extremists, but also because of migrants who are religiously and racially incited from predominantly Islamic countries.
The political scientist Nonna Mayer describes the typical perpetrator in “Territoires perdus” as follows: young, pour, i.e. of Maghreb origin, living in a banlieue. The authors speak of a “climate of violence” that these young men spread throughout entire neighborhoods. They emphasize that this is only about a part of the Muslim population. But they leave no doubt that the rise in anti-Semitic incidents is linked to a re-Islamization that is being pushed by radical imams and agitators. These inoculated young men with hatred for France, the West, homosexuals, emancipated women from Muslim families, secular Arabs and Jews, who supposedly ruled everything.
With its colonial past, a Muslim population of four to ten million people and the largest Jewish community in Europe, France offers an ideal breeding ground for radical Islamic and pro-Palestinian propaganda. The fact that their spread is a mortal danger, especially for Jews, became apparent shortly after the publication of “Territoires perdus”.
Jewish doctor tortured and thrown out of the window
In 2006, a gang kidnapped 23-year-old Jewish cell phone salesman Ilan Halimi in Paris. They kidnap him to a public housing apartment and torture him for 24 days in order to extort money from his family. The kidnappers stub out cigarettes in Halimi’s face and shower him with flammable liquid. Their leader: an Islamist who is dedicated to the Palestinian cause and believes that all Jews are rich.
Instead of calling in the police, neighbors join in the torture, over twenty people take part, some of them are minors. In threatening calls to the Halimi family, the tormentors quote verses from the Koran that Jews are monkeys, pigs and enemies of Allah. On February 13, 2006, Ilan Halimi was found naked and tied up next to a train track, his body covered in knife wounds and burns. He dies on the way to the hospital. His death triggers horror – but no lasting reaction from society.
In 2012, the Islamist Mohammed Merah shot a Jewish teacher and three children in Toulouse, one of whom was only three years old. Two years later, several armed men attacked a young couple in Créteil. They want money, “because we know that Jews have money,” and they tie them up and humiliate them. One of the men rapes the woman and one throws Jewish symbols on the ground. “For my brothers in Palestine,” he says. Also in 2014, pro-Palestinian demonstrators rioted in Jewish neighborhoods in Paris, synagogues had to be protected, and a shop selling kosher goods was set on fire. In 2015, as part of the “Charlie Hebdo” attack, a Muslim extremist murdered four Jews in the “Hyper Cacher” kosher supermarket in Paris.
On April 4, 2017, a religious man from Mali broke into the apartment of Jewish doctor Sarah Halimi, abused her while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and threw her out of the third floor window. A few months later, Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was stabbed to death by two young men in Paris. The main perpetrator, Yacine M., is convicted of murder; the courts recognize an anti-Semitic motive.
“Allah sent them Hitler to punish them”
According to a 2020 survey by the polling institute Ifop, 34 percent of French Jews feel threatened. 46 percent of those surveyed named Islamism as the greatest threat to the Jewish population, well ahead of right-wing extremism (26 percent) and left-wing extremism (23 percent), whose representatives often sympathize with Islamists. A finding that is confirmed by victim surveys in the EU.
Several Islamist attackers in France were inspired by Sayyid Qutb, a mastermind of the Muslim Brotherhood, which includes Hamas. In his 1950 essay “Our Struggle with the Jews” he wrote: “Even into modern times, God has sent his believers to fight them. After that, Allah sent Hitler to them to rule them. But the Jews have returned to evil once again, namely today, in the form of Israel.”
Despite these clear facts, many politicians, scientists and journalists preferred to ignore the problem of Islamic anti-Semitism. The Moroccan-born Jewish historian Georges Bensoussan recently said in an interview that he did not understand the current surprise about “imported anti-Semitism,” especially since it was “rien de nouveau,” nothing new.
As a co-author of “Territoires perdus,” Bensoussan accused the French establishment of betraying the Jews in 2003. Representatives of the left in particular refused to condemn the perpetrators and to name Islamic anti-Semitism. It is better to indulge in ritualized warnings about right-wing extremism, about “Islamophobia” and “populism” when someone raises the issue. “In France,” he wrote, “reality is reconstructed by ideologues.”
The “Spiegel” blames Thilo Sarrazin for the silence
This still applies to some extent today. If you believe the radical French left, the “Islamophobia” complained of by Islamists is France’s biggest problem – and not anti-Semitism. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “France insoumise” refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. Instead, she shows solidarity with demonstrators who accuse Israel of genocide. Or it glorifies people like the recently deported Muslim Brother Hassan Iquioussen as victims of racism – an imam who sensed Jewish conspiracies everywhere and announced that the Jews had conspired against Islam and the Prophet.
In neighboring countries, the escalation of anti-Semitic violence in France could have been a warning. However, many in Switzerland and Germany also looked the other way – and left the construction of reality to the ideologists. This is despite the fact that immigration-related anti-Semitism has not only manifested itself in cities like Berlin, Brussels or London since young men celebrated the Hamas murders and attacked Jewish passers-by.
The “Spiegel” recently wrote that politicians were “happy to remain silent” about imported anti-Semitism. However, Thilo Sarrazin is also to blame for this, because he dealt with the issue in such an inhumane and demagogic manner that a “rational discussion” became impossible.
Islamic anti-Semitism in quotation marks
The journalist Ferda Ataman told Deutschlandfunk in 2018 that “science” cannot say that “something has changed dramatically” when it comes to anti-Semitism. It’s always been there.” There is strong hostility to Jews in the Arab world, but today’s anti-Semitism is not a Muslim import product, and it is “problematic” to even claim such a thing.
Thanks to the Greens, Ataman was able to use such analyzes to become a state-paid “Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination”. Other “experts” such as the Berlin social worker Iman Attia only write about Islamic anti-Semitism in quotation marks. Because, as Attia noted three years after the murder of Ilan Halimi, this is largely the imagination of Western racists who cultivate a “hegemonic discourse” about Muslims. According to Attia, if Muslims have something against Jews, this is a possible reaction to their discrimination.
In 2020, Attia was appointed to the state-supported “Independent Expert Group on Muslimphobia”. There are exceptions, but they have hardly been heard of. In 2016, the German theologian Kai Funkschmidt noted, with reference to France, that Europe prefers to hide its “perplexed shock in the face of a new immigrant hatred of Jews” – behind accusations against the familiar enemy on the right.
According to French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, 588 anti-Semitic incidents have been registered in two weeks since the Hamas massacre on October 7th. Houses where Jews live are daubed with Stars of David. Protests against anti-Semitism, such as those following the murder of Mireille Knoll, are obviously ineffective. Unknown people have desecrated a monument to Ilan Halimi.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon recently posted a video of a pro-Palestinian mass demonstration in Paris. His proud comment: “This is France.”
1698945695
#Intifada #murder #deadly #hatred #Jews #France